Is Tesla’s carbon footprint 10 times larger than Bitcoin’s?
According to available data, Tesla does not have a carbon footprint ten times larger than Bitcoin. In fact, the electric car maker’s carbon footprint is significantly smaller.
In 2019, Tesla released its first “impact” report, based on internal data collected from 2017. Summarizing the report, Bloomberg stated that Tesla emitted an estimated 282,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide worldwide “directly and indirectly, across its facilities, energy operations, network of car chargers and sales and delivery services.”
The energy research journal Joule reported in 2019 that Bitcoin’s “annual carbon emissions range from 22.0 to 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.”
The computing power required to support Bitcoin, an encrypted digital currency, accounts for 0.69% of global energy consumption. If Bitcoin were a country, its energy needs would rank 26th in the world.